Get Creative With a Diversity of Crafts This Summer

Sleepaway camp gives kids so many different opportunities to learn new things, explore new interests and find out so much about themselves and the world around them. Though overnight summer camp is loaded with fun-filled outdoor activities, kids also get a chance to tap into their creative side through arts, crafts, music and drama. Boys and girls love to let their imaginations run wild with every art form from tie-die to oil paints, pottery wheels and free-form ceramics.

Clever Crafts

Arts and crafts are a time-honored camp tradition at summer camps across America. After a lively morning of swimming, boating or hiking and a hearty lunch, it’s great to relax with friends and whip up colorful items from sand candles to leaf prints, friendship bracelets, wind chimes, rain sticks and God’s eyes.

Wearable Memories

T-shirt making is always a popular activity at overnight summer camp, allowing campers to let their creative urges roar in wild tie-die designs, super-cool nature prints and humorous endeavors like joke T’s with a question on the front and a punch line on the back. Not only are hand-made T-shirts fun to design and make, but they also become wearable memories, colorful remembrances of fun-filled days at camp.

Wonders of Woodshop

Woodshop is a big favorite with campers and introduces basic carpentry skills that will come in handy for a lifetime. Usually reserved for older campers, woodshop offers an amazing opportunity to learn how to develop and complete a project using tools from standard hammers to power drills, band saws and planes safely and efficiently. Boys and girls can design and anything from a set for the campfire skit to a mini ping pong table or doll house furniture. Wooden bowls, picture frames, birdhouses, CD racks, puzzles or ping pong paddles: the sky’s the limit!

Cool Ceramics

Who hasn’t imagined sitting at a potter’s wheel and peacefully throwing a pot, molding a mound of spinning clay? Learning to use artistic tools like the potter’s wheel, oil paints and paper mache lets kids experiment with different artistic mediums in a relaxed environment, chatting with friends while they whip up unique masterpieces. Bowls, ceramic fish, vases and candle holders are molded, fired, painted and brought home at summer’s end to become treasured gifts to family or cool bedroom accessories.

Skit Shenanigans

Kids can get creative in lots of other ways at camp. Funny skits, musicals and other theatrical productions offer opportunities to tap into talents like writing, acting and directing. Your shy daughter may find out she cranks out the cleverest skit lines in camp, while your seemingly introverted son may have the time of his life playing a major role in a comedy production. Counselors love kids and are attuned to helping each camper find the confidence to achieve dreams and goals, however small. Just getting up the nerve to submit a skit script or volunteer to play a part are big steps in gaining self-confidence that will carry throughout the summer and beyond.